Hard Determinism and Interpersonal Relationships

David Speetzen, April 2002

1. Introduction

Determinism is the thesis that at any given time there is exactly one physically possible future. Hard determinism, strictly speaking, is the position that 1) determinism is true and 2) determinism is incompatible with the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility1. The consequence of this position, that we cannot be morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of our actions2, is intuitively unappealing for several reasons, including the fact that the reactive attitudes we hold toward our friends and loved ones presuppose praise- or blameworthiness. For example, if hard determinism were true, my feelings of anger toward my friend who betrayed me would be inappropriate, since my anger seemingly presupposes that he can be held responsible for what he does. Gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness are all reactive attitudes threatened by hard determinism, but they also appear to be attitudes characteristic of our relationships with other people.

P.F. Strawson argues that even if determinism were true, our abandoning those attitudes that presuppose moral responsibility would be psychologically impossible, and if it weren't thus impossible, it would be irrational in any case3. Factors like accident and ignorance may mitigate our reactive attitudes. For example, if my friend 'betrayed' me by mumbling secrets in his sleep, I would hold less anger toward him than if he had gone out of his way to tell people those secrets. But, says Strawson, adopting the stance that persons are never appropriate objects of blame or praise, as we do regarding the psychologically deranged or "morally underdeveloped," confines one to a certain objectivity of attitude (as opposed to a participant attitude) that would make it impossible to maintain interpersonal relationships.

In his paper "Determinism al Dente,4" Derk Pereboom rejects the idea that attempting to align our reactive attitudes with our metaphysical beliefs (such as a belief in hard determinism) is in vain. Against Strawson, he holds that we can and do alter our behavior according to our beliefs, at least to some extent. Further, he thinks that we should attempt to act rationally in the theoretical sense, that is, consistently with our metaphysical beliefs. If we accept these premises, the intuitive conflict between hard determinism and interpersonal relationships again becomes live. How could a friendship survive the abolishment of such important attitudes as forgiveness, gratitude, anger, and guilt? And if it cannot survive the loss of these attitudes, some may even argue that regardless of whether hard determinism is true we must forgo any attempt to live according to the doctrine for the sake of the overall "gains and losses to human life," as Strawson might put it.

Insofar as the reactive attitudes and hard determinism are concerned, Pereboom and I agree: the reactive attitudes presuppose that persons have moral responsibility. Since hard determinism undermines the notion of moral responsibility, a committed hard determinist would act irrationally if she held any reactive attitudes toward anyone. However, if the hard determinist must have at least one reactive attitude in order to adopt a participant stance, i.e., one that would allow for interpersonal relationships, then it seems she cannot have interpersonal relationships.

Pereboom responds to this claim by arguing that the hard determinist still has certain attitudes, and collections of attitudes called 'analogues,' available to her that would suffice to allow her to adopt something very much like the participant stance. Although none of these attitudes or analogues is strictly reactive, Pereboom wants to say that together or separately they are close enough to being reactive attitudes that the hard determinist can use them to justify adopting a participant-like stance.

In this paper, I will argue that this interpretation of Pereboom's strategy fails to show that the hard determinist might adopt a participant-like stance while remaining consistent with her metaphysical conviction in hard determinism. I will first discuss the concept of respect in light of Stephen Darwall's analysis, and suggest that Pereboom's reliance on this concept as an important non-reactive attitude which allows the hard determinist to adopt a participant-like stance is faulty, because it treads on an ambiguity in his use of the term "respect." Next I will discuss the analogues, specifically concentrating on gratitude, and attempt to show that each of this analogues' constituent attitudes, insofar as the hard determinist is able to hold them, are strictly non-reactive, and therefore does not support the adoption of a participant-like stance. In other words, though Pereboom's analogues may capture, in a piecemeal way, what it means to hold attitudes like, say, forgiveness, resentment, gratitude, and love, they are not sufficient to allow the hard determinist to adopt a disposition toward persons that would allow her to treat them any differently than she would treat machines. Since I will assume, along with Pereboom, that an agent who adopts this kind of disposition and its consequent behavior would be unable to maintain interpersonal relationships, I will conclude that a hard determinist conviction would undermine these relationships.

2. The Objective Stance

Neither Strawson nor Pereboom offers an analysis of the objective stance. However, each says enough about the concept to enable us to appreciate it. First and foremost, when Strawson and Pereboom refer to the objective or participant attitudes, they are talking about overall dispositions toward some object. Since we will be discussing both specific attitudes like forgiveness, resentment, etc., as well as these more general dispositions, to avoid confusion, I will refer to the "objectivity of attitude" as the objective stance and the participant attitude as the participant stance. I will restrict my use of the term "attitude" to the more specific attitudes, whether reactive or otherwise.

As Strawson describes it, adopting the objective stance toward another is

to see him, perhaps, as an object of social policy; as a subject for what, in a wide range of sense, might be called treatment; as something certainly to be taken account, perhaps precautionary account, of; to be managed or handled or cured or trained; perhaps simply to be avoided... ("Freedom and Resentment" p. 66) From this account, we deduce that someone who adopts the objective stance does not simply ignore the 'object' (the person regarded in this way) of this stance. Though holding an objective stance toward them, one might still speak and interact with other people, but the interaction differs in approach. In the objective stance, the behavior, feelings, and the mere existence of other persons are simply factors to consider in making decisions. Pereboom adds the following about the objective stance:

...nothing about hard determinism recommends assuming an objectivity of attitude. The specter of this outlook arises from the sense that the hard determinist is constrained to view other persons as mere mechanical devices, to be used and not respected. ("Determinism al Dente" p. 41) Ordinarily, this contrast between regarding persons not as persons but as "mere mechanical devices" relies on the assumption that an entity is regarded as a person if, under appropriate conditions, that entity is a suitable candidate for reactive attitudes like respect, resentment, forgiveness, indignation, praise, blame, and so on. If I view persons as things to be manipulated, or 'used,' rather than seeing them as persons toward whom I rationally can hold reactive attitudes like the above, then I stop seeing persons as persons: I regard persons in exactly the same way as I regard non-persons. Clearly, the distinction between reactive and non-reactive attitudes becomes important here: I will use the negative characterization of reactive attitudes suggested by Jonathan Bennett. An x's attitude toward y is a reactive attitude if and only if x's attitude is one "which could not explain x's engaging in... inquiry into how y works," either as an end to itself, say to satisfy x's curiosity, or as a means to some further, perhaps policy-oriented or therapeutic, end of x's.5

Now if one's holding a reactive attitude toward some object is what allows one to view that object as something other than as a mere mechanical device, it seems that this is precisely what is meant when we say that one adopts a participant stance: one adopts this stance toward some object if one holds at least one reactive attitude toward that object. Conversely, one adopts an objective stance toward some object if one has attitudes toward that object, none of which is reactive. This distinction cannot be overemphasized. Pereboom will claim that some middle ground between full-blooded reactive attitudes and non-reactive attitudes is available to the hard determinist, and that this middle ground allows the hard determinist to adopt a non-objective stance. But what separates the objective from the participant stance is not a matter of degree-either some of an agent's attitudes toward some object are reactive, or they are not. If at least one reactive attitude is present, it would suffice for the participant stance, if not, the hard determinist has available to her nothing more than the objective stance.

3. Respect

Pereboom claims that "The hard determinist... is not compelled to deny that human beings are rational and responsive to reasons, and no feature of her view threatens the appropriateness of respecting persons for their rational capacities"("Determinism al Dente" p.41). In both this passage, and in his prior one regarding the objective stance, we might interpret Pereboom as suggesting that the difference that allows the hard determinist to avoid the objective stance is that persons are rational and non-persons are not. The idea would be that since the hard determinist can hold the attitude of respect toward persons based on their rationality, and since she could not hold this attitude toward non-persons in the same way, she would be able to adopt the participant stance in light of this respect.

Can respect provide grounds for the hard determinist's adoption of a participant stance? Stephen Darwall points out that there are two different notions of respect6. The first, recognition respect, is one

...which can have any of a number of different sorts of things as its object and which consists, most generally, in a disposition to weigh appropriately in one's deliberations some feature of the thing in question and to act accordingly. The law, someone's feelings, and social institutions with their positions and roles are examples of things which can be the object of this sort of respect...[T]his kind of respect consists in giving appropriate consideration of recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do... ("Two Kinds of Respect" p. 67) For example, when I pack a first aid kit into my rucksack before an excursion into the wilderness, I show recognition respect for the fact that nature can be a dangerous place; my failure to consider this fact could have negative consequences for me. Likewise, when I approach a large dog I do so slowly and carefully, because I realize that if I approach too quickly, the dog might startle and tear me to ribbons. We may also consider the ways we handle violent criminals and deranged psychopaths, incarceration and counseling, as showing recognition respect for the threat these people pose to individuals and society. Recognition respect need not be restricted to avoiding discomfort, pain, or other undesirable circumstances. I might show recognition respect for the pleasures of music by setting aside time to listen to it, or I might bring an extra few dollars to my favorite restaurant so that I can order the flawless lobster prepared there, thereby showing recognition respect for the dish and the restaurant, and so on. But since an agent's recognition respect for some object functions solely as a means to an end, be it safety, aesthetic pleasure, or tasty lobster, recognition respect cannot be considered a reactive attitude.

The other kind of respect Darwall proposes is what he calls appraisal respect. As he defines it, appraisal respect is "a positive appraisal of a person or his character-related features"("Two Kinds of Respect" p. 70). As Darwall says, appraisal respect is reserved for persons, and for "features which are held to manifest their excellence as persons or as engaged in some specific pursuit"(67). In his article, Darwall doesn't comment on the relationship between appraisal respect and moral responsibility explicitly, but it seems reasonable to think that such a connection exists. Suppose, for example, that I hold appraisal respect for a friend in virtue of his honesty. But suppose that I find out later that he is always under the influence of some drug that compels him to be honest. In one sense, I might still regard him in the same way: he is an honest person. But I will also cease to regard him as worthy of my appraisal respect because of his honesty. Regardless of whether or not he would be honest in the absence of the drug, my appraisal respect for him is undermined by the fact that he is not morally responsible for this feature of his character.

Another example may help to show that moral responsibility is a necessary condition of appraisal respect. We respect Olympic athletes who win races in a different sense than we "respect" horses, dogs, and Pinewood Derby cars that do likewise in their circuits because model cars, dogs, and horses are not responsible for their achievements in the way people are. Watching a sleek Pinewood Derby car careening down the track may amaze and excite us, but we can hardly respect it for moving as fast as a sprinter in the 100-meter dash. Of course, were we to place wagers on which car would win which race, we might have some ground for recognition respect, in that failing to consider a particularly fast model in our calculations might have financially undesirable consequences. But appraisal respect can only be held toward persons, we think, simply because they bear moral responsibility for their actions. To the extent that we might regard horses and dogs with appraisal respect, we do so only because we attribute to them some relevant moral responsibility, some agency, in developing their own athletic abilities. Presumably, such appraisal respect is misplaced. Appraisal respect, as opposed to recognition respect, could not explain one's inquiry into the object to attain some further end, nor as an end in and of itself. Therefore, we may conclude that it is a reactive attitude.

We can now respond to Pereboom's claim that "no feature of [the hard determinist] view threatens the appropriateness of respecting persons for their rational capacities" with these two kinds of respect in mind. Since recognition respect does not presuppose moral responsibility, and since appraisal respect does presuppose moral responsibility, recognition respect, and not appraisal respect, is compatible with hard determinism. But it is not enough to show that some kinds of respect are unavailable to the hard determinist. We must also see whether the remaining kind of respect, that of the recognition variety, allows the committed hard determinist to adopt a participant, rather than an objective, stance toward persons.

Recall that according to Pereboom, the difference that allows the hard determinist to avoid the objective stance toward persons is that one can adopt an attitude of respect toward persons (based on their rationality) but not toward non-persons. However, under hard determinism the only relevant kind of respect is recognition respect. As we have seen, recognition respect is not a reactive attitude, and can be held toward non-persons as well as toward persons. So from the mere fact that one can adopt such an attitude of respect toward something, it does not follow that the overall stance one takes toward that entity is participant.

It may seem as though I have sidestepped the issue of rationality entirely, because I have dealt only with the notion of respect held in virtue of that rationality. Even though the hard determinist is constrained to respecting persons recognitionally, and this type of respect is clearly not a reactive attitude, it might still be urged that the fact that persons are rational, and non-persons are not, allows the hard determinist to adopt a participant stance regarding persons.

Part of what makes this claim seem plausible is the somewhat intuitive connection between rationality and moral responsibility. The view that our reason-responsiveness allows persons, and not non-persons, rationally to choose between right and wrong actions in such a way that they can be held blame- or praiseworthy for their actions would indeed provide ground for the entire array of reactive attitudes. However, since the hard determinist has already denied that persons are morally responsible, she cannot appeal to rationality to support a participant stance. Her consideration of other persons' rationality would be restricted either to discovering their motives (how a given person 'works') with an eye toward her own ends, or to satisfying her curiosity. Since this consideration clearly is non-reactive, she can adopt nothing more than an objective stance.

Still, might the hard determinist not regard persons as more deserving of recognition respect than non-persons, in virtue of their rationality? I do not think so. In order to support a participant stance, the difference between the attitudes the hard determinist holds toward persons, as opposed to those she holds toward non-persons, must be one of kind, not of degree: it does not matter how much recognition respect the hard determinist holds for persons. Since this respect is qualitatively no different from the recognition respect she holds for non-persons, and quite clearly involves treating the object as a kind of means to the further ends of the agent, it does not support adopting a participant stance.

True, neither dogs nor Pinewood Derby cars are responsive to reasons, but in terms of the hard determinist's recognition respect, it is unclear why this particular difference between persons and non-persons should make a difference. If I hold some given non-reactive attitude toward dogs, as well as toward rocks, it doesn't seem to matter that the dog is responsive to a wider set of stimuli than the rock. The dog's responses are contingent upon its environment and temperament, neither of which are within the dog's control, in the exact same way as the way in which the rock's environment and physical makeup are beyond its control. In the hard determinist view, a person's response to a given state of affairs will be just as contingent on factors beyond that person's ultimate control as the dog's temperament and the rock's location are beyond their control. Recognition respect does not justify the hard determinist's adopting a participant stance, even toward persons. Since no other option for respecting persons is available, the hard determinist is constrained to the objective stance.

4. Gratitude and the Analogues

Though Darwall's dual notion of respect may lead us to conclude that the hard determinist's respect for persons does not justify adoption of the participant stance, we have still not addressed one of the most compelling features of Pereboom's position: the analogues. Intuitively, hard determinism lacks some charm and "user-friendliness"-adopting this position forces us seriously, and sometimes uncomfortably, to reconsider some major and far-reaching assumptions we have about the world and our place in it. Our initial response to the doctrine that legitimate praise and blame do not exist ranges from emotional repulsion to cynical acceptance, but nobody seems to want such a doctrine to be true. In order for us to accept it, Pereboom tries to show that hard determinism is not only compatible with our ideas about interpersonal relationships, but that it is beneficial to them in some way-a difficult task when we consider the wide variety of feelings we have that presuppose what hard determinism says does not exist, moral responsibility. To accomplish this, Pereboom develops his analogues by "removing" the components of moral responsibility presupposed by reactive attitudes such as gratitude, etc., and claims that what remain-the analogues-are sufficient for sustaining interpersonal relationships. Even though, strictly speaking, these analogues could not be considered reactive attitudes, Pereboom's position appears to be that they are similar enough to such attitudes to allow the hard determinist to adopt a participant-like stance.

Along with Pereboom, we might view reactive attitudes as collections of simpler attitudes. Gratitude, for instance, can be seen as a combination of joy, mutual well-being and respect, and thankfulness toward another for performing some action on our behalf. The notion of thankfulness central to the experience of gratitude, however, seems to suppose that the object of thankfulness, the other person, was responsible for his actions in such a way that praise is appropriate. However, if hard determinism is true, then the person who did the kind deed is not morally responsible for his actions and, hence, is not deserving of thankfulness. But joy, respect, and mutual well-being, according to Pereboom, are consistent with hard determinism; taken together, these attitudes form his analogue for gratitude. A similar move is made with forgiveness, apology, and love. In this section I will be concerned with whether these analogues would allow a hard determinist to adopt a participant-like stance in interpersonal relationships or if, as we saw with respect, she is constrained by her metaphysical position to adopting the objective stance.

Before turning to the analogues for what Pereboom calls the 'positive' reactive attitudes, I would like to look at his treatment of the 'negative' ones. In spite of his strategy, Pereboom does not formulate analogues for anger and resentment. He writes,

...we sometimes have the ability to prevent, alter, or eliminate resentment and anger, and given a belief in hard determinism, we might well do so for the sake of morality and rationality. Modification of anger and resentment, aided by a determinist conviction, could well be a good thing for relationships (supposing that no unhealthy repression is induced). At the very least, the claim that it would be harmful requires further argument. (Determinism al Dente p. 40) It is not essential to my project to argue that eliminating these negative reactive attitudes would threaten interpersonal relationships. However, I would like to comment on this claim. First, though it is difficult to see why this should be the case, the histories of many of our closest and most valued relationships with other people are marked by periods of anger or resentment. Of course, these episodes of negative attitudes and emotional struggle are not the day-to-day norm in healthy relationships. But if our richest friendships and romantic involvements are characterized by at least some anger, resentment, etc., then we might worry that doing away with these attitudes may undermine our ability to form such deep relationships. Take, for example, a fight between friends that happened years ago, and is now recalled fondly and with laughter. Though, in the short term, anger or resentment may be destructive to relationships, expressing and overcoming them may form an important bond between two people-and these attitudes must be present in order to be expressed and overcome.

Second, it is not clear why the strategy Pereboom employs with gratitude and forgiveness cannot also work with anger and resentment. Certain components of anger do seem compatible with hard determinism: aggression, sorrow, and frustration. The hard determinist may opt to forswear blaming other people for their actions, but the sadness and anxiety that such actions sometimes bring about are still very real and available to her. Assuming that anger does damage and sometimes end interpersonal relationships, there doesn't seem to be any good reason to suppose that, even if they were to allow the hard determinist to adopt a participant-like stance, these analogues would not similarly threaten friendship, romantic involvements, and the like.

That said, in the remainder of this section I will attempt to show that Pereboom's strategy of basing a participant-like stance on the analogues is unsuccessful. These analogues, though capturing some features of the original reactive attitudes, fail to provide grounds for the adoption of a participant-like stance in the same way as recognition respect fails to do so. Since the constituents of the analogues are strictly non-reactive, none of them, either alone or in combination, would justify the hard determinist's treating persons as anything other than mechanical devices, rocks, states of affairs, etc. Rather than examine each positive reactive attitude individually, I will restrict myself to close scrutiny of gratitude and its proposed analogue. My analysis of this concept and Pereboom's analogue for it should provide us with good reason for rejecting the rest of the analogues, assuming relevant similarities among them.

Before, we said that gratitude has the following constituents: joy, mutual well-being, mutual respect, and thankfulness toward another for performing some action on our behalf. I should note here that Pereboom does not cite thankfulness in discussing gratitude-the feature of gratitude that "would seem to require the supposition that the person to whom one is grateful is morally responsible"(40) is left unnamed. My choice of terminology for this aspect of gratitude is irrelevant: it is the aspect undermined by hard determinism, and so the proposed analogue does not incorporate it.

Of the other constituents of gratitude, mutual respect appears the most doubtful candidate for the source of a participant attitude. As we discussed at length above, recognition respect is the only sort of respect available to the hard determinist, and it is clearly not a reactive attitude. Therefore, we cannot expect the hard determinist to be able to adopt a participant stance in virtue of this feature of gratitude.

Joy falls into a class of attitudes that we have not discussed thus far. Like sadness or pain, joy need not have an object, someone or something toward which the joy is experienced. With that in mind, it is difficult to see how joy could possibly justify a participant stance toward someone, simply because joy is not experienced toward anyone at all. But, one might respond, couldn't an agent feel joyful toward someone by recognizing him or her as the source of the joy? There is nothing about hard determinism that precludes the association of some positive or negative experience with a person, and in attributing our joy to him we appear to hold a participant stance toward him. Though different from joy itself, we might refer to this attitude as joy-attribution. However, as with respect, there are two ways in which this joy-attribution might occur. On the one hand, one might believe that the other person was morally responsible for the joy one experiences. In this case, though the attitude would appear to be reactive, it is one that is unavailable to the hard determinist because it presupposes that persons have moral responsibility. On the other hand, one might recognize that the other person was the causal source of the joy. However, implicit in this conception of joy-attribution is the idea that it motivates reflection or inquiry into the object's workings either as a means to a further end (I recognize that this object causes joy in me, and so I resolve to come into more frequent contact with it), or as a purely reflective endeavor, (I am curious as to why I am experiencing this joy, and seeking out causal factors, I locate the object). Therefore, joy-attribution without the component of moral responsibility cannot be a reactive attitude. And since we can attribute this type of joy to any number of objects, from paintings, pets, music, and natural landscapes, perhaps even to mechanical devices, it cannot provide grounds for a participant-like stance.

The case of mutual well-being seems very similar to the above. By itself, a feeling of "well-being" is virtually indistinguishable from contentment, happiness, or joy. But the idea Pereboom apparently is trying to convey is an attitude of "well-wishing" for another, and so I will treat the two as equivalent. For instance, suppose someone comes along and does something nice for me on my behalf. If I were a hard determinist, I could not consistently hold an attitude of gratitude proper toward that person, but I could experience this sense of mutual well-being-I can wish my benefactor well and know, likewise, that he wishes me well. It doesn't seem to matter that he can't really deserve my well-wishing: I simply hope that things turn out in his favor later on, and am perhaps willing to go out of my way to do something nice for him. Is this sort of attitude enough to provide for a participant stance?

We might consider another example. This time, I am caught in a field during a violent storm. I see a small copse of trees nearby and enter it. One tree has particularly dense foliage and a relatively comfortable niche in its trunk for me to sit in. While sheltering in the tree, I acquire a somewhat more positive outlook on trees in general, and on this tree specifically. After the storm, I may hope that the tree I sat in is not cut down, that it gets enough water and sunlight to flourish, and I may even be willing to look after the whole copse, making sure it is not cut down by land developers, etc. My motivation for holding these attitudes could be that I genuinely think the tree deserves praise, and thereby reward, for what it has done for me. But provided that I do not think the tree is morally responsible for sheltering me, my well-wishing could certainly motivate my wondering about why the tree is a good shelterer, how it came to be planted there, and whether I might use the tree during future storms, etc. That being the case, and considering that this type of well-wishing is equally applicable to persons as well as trees, it does not seem that the attitude provides grounds for adopting anything more than an objective stance.

It might be objected that this example is not one in which there is a sense of mutual well-being. Since the tree is not capable of cognition, it cannot wish me well. However, it is not clear why the mental and emotional capacities of the object of a hard determinist's well-wishing should matter to her. Even if another person wished her well, she would recognize that the decision of whether or not to wish her well was not under that person's ultimate control-she would perceive his well-wishing as a favorable aspect of the environment around her, in the same way that the copse of trees was a favorable aspect of my environment. Not even reciprocal well-wishing allows adoption of the participant stance.

We have exhausted the features of gratitude that Pereboom believes are both consistent with hard determinism and are enough to avoid the objective stance, and found that none of them justifies adopting a participant-like stance. Although I will not argue against them here, I believe that the other proposed analogues fall prey to the same sort of objection. When we have removed the component of moral responsibility from our conception of the reactive attitudes that presuppose it, the remaining features fail to be reactive and so do not justify adopting a participant stance. If the objective stance undermines interpersonal relationships, and if a hard determinist position leads to this objectivity, then we must conclude that hard determinism is incompatible with interpersonal relationships.

In this paper I have taken for granted the notion that an objectivity of attitude would undermine relationships-mainly because Pereboom and Strawson both think that the idea is intuitively correct. I, too, agree with this claim, though at present I do not know how to argue for it. I have tried to show that an interpretation of Pereboom's views to the effect that hard determinism does not mandate the objective stance relies on a notion of respect that presupposes moral responsibility. The sort of respect open to the hard determinist is not enough to support the participant stance, or a participant-like stance, and hence, the adoption of the hard determinist position would pose serious problems to interpersonal relationships. I have also argued that the analogues Pereboom proposes for attitudes that do presuppose moral responsibility fail for the same reasons: even if these attitudes are held by the hard determinist toward other persons, none of them is reactive, and so she has no grounds for adopting a participant-like stance. If we refuse to hold each other morally responsible for our actions, in accordance with hard determinism, it would appear that we cannot sustain the interpersonal relationships so important to us all.

Notes

  1. In his book Living Without Free Will, Pereboom stakes out his position as a "hard incompatibilist." The difference is that while hard determinism posits the truth of determinism and the subsequent lack of free will as the reason agents lack moral responsibility, hard incompatibilism holds that neither determinism nor indeterminism is compatible with the sort of freedom necessary for moral responsibility. Since the existence of moral responsibility is the issue at hand, and not the truth of determinism, I assume that my arguments against hard determinism's compatibility with interpersonal relationships will also hold against hard incompatibilism's.
  2. This conclusion is contested, but since Pereboom accepts it and it remains popular in the literature, I will not argue for it here.
  3. P.F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment."
  4. Derk Pereboom, "Determinism al Dente." Noûs 29, 1995. pp. 21-45
  5. Jonathan Bennett "Accountablity," in Van Straaten, ed.; Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P.F. Strawson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, 14-47. p. 38
  6. Stephen Darwall, "Two Kinds of Respect," in Deigh, ed.; Ethics and Personality: Essays in Moral Psychology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991, 65-78.

Return to the senior defense description.

Return to the philosophy home page.